Some 740 billion text messages were sent in the first half of 2009 in the U.S. This according to the CTIA’s semiannual wireless industry survey, which helpfully breaks down that astonishing figure to an even more astonishing 4.1 billion texts per day. That’s about double the number sent during the same period last year.
“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” So begins Apple’s response to the FCC’s inquiry into its rejection of the app and of its App Store approval process. Seems Google Voice was withheld from the App Store not because of any ill feeling toward Google or a nefarious request from AT&T, but because it too closely mimics the iPhone OS.
Once again, the iPhone is safe for text messaging. Apple on Friday distributed iPhone OS 3.0.1, a point release to the operating system that addresses a security vulnerability that could have allowed a malicious hacker to seize control of an iPhone with an unusual SMS text message.
Google’s finally gone and done something with GrandCentral, the voice communications start-up the company acquired some 21 months ago. After migrating it over to its infrastructure and enhancing it with some new features, Google relaunched it this morning as Google Voice. And at first glance, the service is impressive.
If wireless providers applied the per-byte pricing scheme they use for SMS texting to other data transmitted over their cellular networks, it would cost nearly $6,000 to download a single 4 MB song. Yet the price of text messaging has doubled industrywide in the last three years. Why?
Well, it’s about time. With 48 billion text messages sent every month in the United States and one of every eight American households using only mobile phones for communications, it’s finally occurred to the federal government that a nationwide cellphone alert system might be a good idea.
And so yesterday the Federal Communications Commission announced plans [...]
Zingku, Jaiku. Jaiku, Zingku. Sounds like the makings for a reprise of David Letterman’s infamous Academy Awards “Oprah, Uma” gag. But really, they’re the names of Google’s latest acquisitions in the wireless communications space.
In late September Google purchased mobile social-networking start-up Zingku. Now it’s gone and bought Jaiku, a Finnish company that offers an [...]
Yahoo finally beat Google to something. It brought its email client out of beta before Gmail.
This morning Yahoo officially relaunched Yahoo Mail, ending a two-year public test of the Web-based email service that began in September 2005. Its overhaul completed, Yahoo Mail is no longer just a Webmail client, it’s a “social communication” tool. “Our [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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